Ceiling POP designs for your home

The plaster of Paris (POP) is now popularly used in many homes, hotels and apartments. So many home owners and property developers find it difficult selecting from a wide range of designs, types and sizes.

I am creating this thread to talk about the POP, showing pictures of actual work to make it what it later came out to be.

Enjoy

Updated pictures of the finishing of the Enugu state government secretariat building

Make a comment, what do you think of the quality of the finish work?

The expected impacts of Dangote cement price reduction

Of course I heard the information late like many people, up to 12 hours after it made it into the dailies that business mogul, Alhaji Aliko Dangote is about to slash cement prices by up to 40%. I got quite a number of calls from friends and readers of many of my articles on the supposed impact of this news in the building industry. My perspective on the whole thing are to be listed down in my points below;

1. How soon are we going to start buying cement for N1000.00?

I quickly called some of my heavy dealers in Dangote cement and questioned them about this, they said the company asked them yesterday to wait till 2 weeks so they could exhaust the old stock of cement before buying the new batch with lowered costs.

2. How much will you be selling the cement to us the unit consumers?

When I asked them this question, they were of the opinion that since they are supposed to be buying from Dangote at N1000.00 advertised, they will add their offloading charges and profit to the price, which means that you and me might be buying cement for between N1,100-N1,200, depending on your location.

3. Is this new cement exactly the same with the ones in the shops now?

They said its not! They said this cement will be of the 32.5 capacity, instead of the 42.5 in circulation now. Meaning that there is a possibility that this new cement coming in might not be as strong as the ones we are using now.

4. Will this mean that construction costs will fall overall?

Well it needs to be seen first, how much the prices will drop to and how the quality might turn out to be. If the fall is drastic and supplies constant, it might well ease off on project costs and benefit builders and home owners alike. It has the capacity to bring a construction boom if well managed.

5. What impact will this have on the other cement manufacturers and importers?

Do you that there is some news in the grapevine about the real reasons for the price drop being as a result of intense competition and a need to command more market share among cement producers? In this case the competition is expected to react, either reduce prices as well or increase quality, or even drop supplies, creating a heavy scarcity since Dangote is expected to flooded with a deluge of orders. What happens next? Another price increase to scare off surplus demands. Competition is unpredictable.

6. Will it affect the cost of rents, will landlords reduce rents?

That is like wishing for too much, since we have not even seen the reduction, but however there are other factors in construction which needs to drop before rents can drop. What about land costs and illegal fees? What about rods, sand, granite and labour costs, will they all soft-pedal like Dangote?

7. Does this have political undertones, especially ahead of 2015 general elections?

Don't put me in trouble, I don't know!

The Decking Biscuit

You may be wondering what we mean by that term. Of course we all know what biscuits are in real life, but how could we associate it with the construction industry?
The term is coined from the look of the item we are describing.  The decking biscuit is a the little pieces of concrete we mix and cut in order to use them as spacers between the decking wood platform and the reinforcement rods mat. We do this because we need a space to allow us pass our plastic pipes used as conduit pipes for electrical wires. The plastic pipes are fragile,  so we need a sort of protection for it against trampling while the work is ongoing.
See pictures of the process on the decking.

Enugu state conference centre, Enugu

This is the site and current stage of development in the Enugu state government conference centre started by the former Enugu state government.  We are still expecting work to resume on this beautiful project as it will be a great looking building for the state.  We can also earn some good revenue from this conference centre. 

Preparing a building plan

Now this is where many people make things simple or complicated, depending on how they go about it. Your building plan is the single most important document in the whole building preparation. This is where you are supposed to estimate how many rooms and the sizes you will need in your house. You also need to consider the budget, for this and other information, contact us on 08033350750 or ckenneths@ yahoo.co.uk

The technology of block making

Some call it blocks while others call it 'sandcrete', this is an important building material which we get by mixing powdered cement, sharp sand and water in a ratio made to suit the job it was produced for. You might wonder why I used the phrase 'in a ratio made to suit the job it was produced for'? Okay,  there are many uses for blocks apart from using it to raise the walls in homes and fences. Blocks could be used for a variety of works, including

1. Walling of a house
2. Making a fence
3. Building a generator house or any other house that have vibrating machines inside it.
4. Toilet pits or soak away tanks.

Because of the various uses for blocks, the mixing ratio cannot be the same, we tend to reduce the ratio of sand to a bag of cement if we want a more solid mix or a block product which can do more than covering the walls in a house. I will like to mention here that most houses, especially those built with reinforced concrete columns and metal rods, blocks don't bear any loads, this is why you see houses built without blocks at first, the builder will first raise the columns and deck the first floor, then continue with another set of columns which will bear the next floor, and up and up we go.
There are many different types of blocks in modern building, these include

1. 9" hollow blocks
2. 6" hollow blocks
3. 6" solid blocks
4. 5" solid blocks

These blocks could be used according to the specifications of the building plan you are using. Most houses with more than one floors uses the 9" blocks on the ground floor and maybe the next few floors, but as a house rises in height, it is recommended that the weight of the blocks on the top floors be reduced, ie. If you use 9" blocks to do a ground floor, use 6" to do the top floors to ease the weight on the columns, beams and foundation.

 There are two major ways of producing blocks, the first is the older method of using manual labour. Skilled block makers using a metal contraption called a mold, they use this mold to compress mixed cement/sand/water to form blocks and leave them on the ground to set.
The second method was a product of industrialization and the need for increased output to meet builders demand. A machine was invented to help compress mixed sand and produce blocks. This is the type we call the machine made blocks. This machine uses vibration method to compress blocks as against the manual method.

Which one is the stronger? Well, it still depends on the mixing ratio, because it is what you mix that the machine will vibrate. I have seen many breakages among machine made blocks as well with hand made blocks.

More pictures and updates about block making, you can also call us on 08033350750

The steel parapet fascia, a replacement for the concrete?

In home building, the cornice or concrete fascia is a a well known addition to Nigerian architecture of recent years. In the last 7 years, a lot of new houses has been finished with various designs of parapet cornice of varying shapes and sizes, but there has been a lot of concern from new home owners, especially THE COST. Building a concrete parapet is expensive, its heavy and it takes time. This is why some researchers came up with ideas on how to solve this three problems. Their solution was to make the parapet with a prefabricated material which could be readily available and more affordable than concrete fascia. I will show samples of the new parapet made of steel, there are some others made with aluminium.

Adding pictures later........

Tigerkenn property development initiative

We in the Tigerkenn Homes team believes in doing our work with utmost dedication, determination and transparency. We also have the dream to grow into a building company where property investors will be proud to patronize because of the quality of houses we build and sell. Home ownership and property acquisition is not an easy task, but our desire has always been to simplify the process of investing in properties by working to first create trust, then seek good locations where we can acquire lands for the purpose of housing development. In a nutshell, we intend to give you the rest of mind as you invest in properties.

At the moment we are looking at some locations in Enugu to kick-start our pioneer estate, and due to the reason that we are a young company trying to make a huge impact in the scene, we are going to be looking at locations where land costs are still low. Knowing the building industry as well as I know it, I know that many locations will develop with time, but how much time? That is the million naira question.

I am searching out lands in the outskirts of Enugu town, and I am not going to restrict my search to any particular location, I am going to be testing the ground, while listening to your feedback.

08033350750

 There are a lot of reasons why I am looking seriously at Uguogo Nike.

1. Lands are cheap there in comparison to Enugu town.
2. There is no more space inside Enugu town, so the town is pushing this way (I have to be here to wait for the town to come and meet me here )
3. Food and agricultural products are very cheap here, a farming population
4. If an Nsukka man becomes the next governor of Enugu state, this place will experience rapid development, as this community is very close to Nsukka zone.
5. A lot of notable personalities, companies, churches are already buying lots of lands around here, I need to take position too.
6. This place is halfway between Enugu and Nsukka zones, the development of the two towns will be felt here.

For more info, please follow this link http://www.nairaland.com/1830688/tigerkenn-homes-property-development-initiative

All you need to know about the Decking Slab

ALL ABOUT THE DECKING SLAB

In home building construction, people get confused with different technical terminologies being used by industry professionals to describe different types of the work. Since its not everyone that underwent training in construction engineering, a need therefore arises to explain some of the technical terms we might meet in home construction. This is why we are going to look at the term “decking”.
A decking, which could be described by insiders in the building industry as the suspended slab, is a platform built to hang on top of a building ground floor unit, and therefore forms the floor for the upper unit of a building. There are many materials that could be used to create a decking platform. Engineers have used metal sheets, aluminum, hard wood, concrete, synthetic fibres and thick plywood boards to create different shapes and sizes of decking for use in different types of buildings.
For the sake of this write up, we are going to be focusing our attention on the concrete decking slab. The concrete decking slab is made when the objective of the deck is durability and safety. Among other types of decking materials, the concrete is among the most reliable, it could last for very long, even up to hundreds of years. In buildings where fire could be a risk, the concrete deck could be relied upon as compared to wood or plywood. The concrete deck also fits well on buildings especially those started with concrete columns and beams.
The concrete beam is always reinforced with good quality metal bars (iron rods). The specifications of the rods that should work in any decking slab should be detailed by a qualified building professional, specified in the building plans and approved by the state or local authorities to ensure compliance to existing building codes. There are so many types of iron bars for different decking slabs, there is the 25mm, 20mm, 16mm, 12mm, 10mm, 8mm etc. These iron rods are used in the combination suited for the project, as stated in the building plans.
There are also specifications on the thickness of the slab, the mixing ratio for sand and aggregates like granite, gravel and for cement. Care should be taken to ensure a superb mix for the decking slab concrete, a good concrete mixer is advised where it is available. A concrete poking Romance-Machine is also a very useful tool to ensure the efficiency of the decking process.
The following pictures are for the decking we have completed in the past, we have started and completed more than 60 different decking slabs in different locations, for more questions and inquiry, call Kenn on 08033350750.

Decorative Stonework Designs For Residential Homes

It adds a certain glamour to your walls,  either in the interior or exterior of the house.  It could be applied in a wide variety of designs and sizes.  The costs also varies. Call us on 08033350750 for a detailed explanation of the processes and maybe a competitive price quotation for your building. 

The compound of your house and interlocking tiles

The compound is very important in a house.  This is the area you are going to be spending a lot of time with family and friends.  What you do with such an important area is going to define how happy you are in the home.  The interlocking stones are made from concrete mixture and are hard enough for vehicles and other heavy items to move around the compound.  Expertise is important while laying down the tiles.  The tiles could be combined in a variety of ways to give optimum visual serenity to please the occupants and visitors to the compound. 

Here are some samples,  I will keep adding more as time goes on.  

Keep in touch as we will be updating the blog with pictures of completed compounds. 

Frightening heights

There are government's projects that sometimes look as if they go against the general goodwill of the masses,  especially when not well finished

.

In the following pictures I am about to show here, the government of Enugu State will be commended for the great road works and embankments they built to make life easier for the citizens of the state, but why did they not think of building metal handrails as protection against falls for the users of the pedestrian bridge and walkways?